Kyle Mack, of the United States, celebrates after winning the silver medal in the men’s Big Air snowboard competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Local and international Olympic and sports researchers will discuss issues including apartheid, doping, and Olympic challenges and controversies March 9-10 during the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research conference on campus.

The conference is the first for the two-year-old center, one of only three Olympic studies centers in the nation and the only one on the West Coast.

“The conference emerged out of a need and an opportunity,” said John Gleaves, associate professor of kinesiology who co-directs the center with fellow kinesiology faculty members Matthew Llewellyn and Toby Rider. “We also saw a need for our students to present their research at an international conference while also being exposed to international scholars from around the world.”

Attendees at the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research conference will hear from Anita DeFrantz, left, Andrew Zimbalist and Jill Yesko. (Photos courtesy of Cal State Fullerton)

Two keynoters will speak during the two-day program:

Anita DeFrantz, the first African-American and first American woman to serve on the International Olympic Committee and an Olympic medalist and author of “My Olympic Life, A Memoir”

Andrew Zimbalist, economist at Smith College and author of books including “Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup.”

DeFrantz is a member of the International Olympic Committee and the IOC Executive Board. She has devoted much of her career to advocacy and access in sports and has worked to close the gender gap for athletes while, through her work at the LA84 Foundation, ensuring that young athletes throughout Southern California have access to sports.

“She is arguably the most powerful woman in the world of sport,” Gleaves said.

Zimbalist is an internationally recognized authority on the economics and business of sporting events, noted Gleaves.

The conference will also include a screening of “Tainted Blood: The Untold Story of the 1984 Blood Doping Scandal” with a discussion by filmmaker Jill Yesko and Dave Grylls, a member of the 1984 U.S. men’s track cycling team that won the silver in the 4,000 meters team event.

“With Los Angeles being awarded the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, we felt this was a great opportunity to recognize his outstanding body of scholarship while helping our region consider what we want the Games to look like and what kind of legacy, both on infrastructure and the economy, we want the Games to leave behind,” Gleaves said.

New campus chief of police takes over

Raymund Aguirre assumed command March 1 as police chief for Cal State Fullerton after a nationwide search.

Raymund Aguirre took over March 1 as police chief for Cal State Fullerton after a nationwide search. (Photo courtesy of Cal State Fullerton)

Aguirre, previously chief of the San Diego Community College District Police, will oversee the university’s force of 30-sworn police officers and its 17 staff members.

A swearing-in ceremony will be held at 1:30 p.m. Friday, March 16, at the Golleher Alumni House on campus.

Aguirre also served as chief of police for the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District and has worked with the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and Palo Alto Police Department. He holds a master’s degree in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s in sociology from the University of the Philippines.

He succeeds Dennis J. DeMaio, who served for six years as chief before retiring.

Student consulting team nabs third in contest

A CSUF Consulting team placed third in a major national competition, the Small Business Institute Project of the Year, competing against about 100 other universities.

Open Castings is an online platform that allows actors to audition for roles and casting directors to find the best candidate. Involved with the client are alums Will and Bill Taormina, who are donors to the Center for Entrepreneurship, and alum Trevor Heath.

“Its unique value proposition was to allow actors to use a smartphone to submit an audition tailored to a specific role. This gives actors and directors the freedom to submit and screen auditions at times most convenient for them, saving time and money,” explained Herzog.

The team was tasked with helping Open Castings better understand its potential customer and build a go-to-market strategy. The work included customer interviews and surveys, a feasibility study, business model development, a competitive analysis and a customer acquisition growth strategy.

Companies interested in becoming a client of CSU Consulting should contact Charlesetta Medina at 657-278-8243 or cymedina@fullerton.edu.

Faculty, student civil engineers honored

The Orange County Engineering Council has honored Cal State Fullerton civil engineering faculty member and alum Beena Ajmera and graduate student Mohammed Al-Behadili.

Civil and environmental engineering faculty member Beena Ajmera and graduate student Mohammed Al-Behadili accept their awards from CT Bathala, center, president of the Orange County Engineering Council. (Photo courtesy of Cal State Fullerton)

Ajmera, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, received the outstanding educator award and Al-Behadili took home the outstanding engineering student award from the council’s Feb. 17 National Engineers Week awards banquet.

Ajmera’s research focuses on geotechnical engineering in the areas of shear strength and compressibility of soil, soil modification and soil dynamics. She has co-authored more than 100 journal and conference papers and mentored scores of CSUF, high school and community college students.

Al-Behadili is involved in a study examining how the strength of soil is influenced by vertical stress of a building and how the vertical stress has varied over time.

Reporting on the interesting research and stimulating events at Cal State Fullerton is right up Wendy’s journalistic alley. A San Francisco native, Wendy earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Stanford and a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. After working in the news offices at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC San Francisco Medical Center, she became a business/technology reporter for the Puget Sound Business Journal and served as business editor at the Daily Breeze before moving to copy editing and working for the Seattle Times. She joined the Register in 2003, where she was a team leader on the copy desk until early 2017. She teaches copy editing at Chapman University part-time, has two grown children and lives in downtown Anaheim, where she can walk to yoga and good coffee.

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